Plaque and Gingivitis

Dangling Democracy:  Those texts that members of the House January 6^th Committee read out loud before the vote seeking a contempt charge against former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appear to have hit a nerve with certain Fox newscasters named Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham as well as some Republican members of the House which explains why Ohio Congressman/Gym Rat Jim Jordan, has acknowledged that he was the one who texted Meadows “suggesting” that VP Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believed to be unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.  To be clear those so called “unconstitutional votes” were the votes from the swing states that the FG lost to Biden; the vote counts from the states that the FG won as well as all those votes for House and Senate Republicans, well duh, they were obviously legitimate.  Simply put, the plan which came close to succeeding, was to toss the legitimate results of the presidential election and then declare the FG victorious because who needs elections anyway when the FG was obviously the “best” guy for the job?  Jordan has no remorse about his text, he’s just pissed that RINO Liz Cheney and those evil committee Democrats had the audacity to read them out loud on the House floor. Of course Jordan wasn’t texting in a vacuum, according to one of those NY Times tick tock articles at least five other House Republicans were part of the cabal working closely with ringleader Meadows to overturn the results of the election. In addition to Jordan, the seditionist six included five other nefarious white guys: Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, Alabama’s Mo Brooks, and Texas’ Louie Gohmert. Perry was the one who advocated for the replacement of then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who remains “too ill” to show up for his scheduled January 6^th Committee testimony where, when and if he ever shows, he says he will be pleading the Fifth, an admission that he’s got lots to hide.  For his part Louis Gohmert, who is now seeking the Republican nomination to run for Texas Attorney General, helped further the plan by suing to get the courts to endorse having Pence toss out those “illegitimate”  state electoral slates in the hope that the case would make it to the Supreme Court where he believed that “FG ally” Samuel Alito, the Justice responsible for the circuit covering Texas, would rule in his favor.  As crazy as all of this sounds, it’s important to remember that the coup almost succeeded, and that next time around it could especially with all those voter suppression laws being passed across the country and with so many of the main stream Republican state officials who stood in its way, people like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, under attack and likely to be replaced by coup friendly extreme right wingers by 2024.  In case there is any doubt the Republican Party continues to bow to the FG, look to the RNC’s decision to pay up to $1.6 million of his legal bills, ones related to his NY business activities rather than those related to his presidential duties.  That’s the billionaire FG who is sitting on about $100 million in PAC money that could be used to cover his legal expenses. Also look to the group of forty conservative leaders, including former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, Citizens United President David Bossie, Club for Growth President David Mcintosh and Conservative Partnership Institute Chairman Jim DeMint who sent a letter to GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy urging him to remove Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney from the House GOP conference due to their “egregious actions” as members of the House January 6^th Committee. They are so afraid of Liz Cheney, and to be fair they should be, she’s working methodically, taking no prisoners and really wants to take all of them down.  #TeamLiz at least for now, when she runs for president, not so much.   

Politics Unusual: President Biden and Senate Leader Schumer have shifted their attention from getting the Build Back Better legislation passed before year end to pushing forward with voters rights legislation.  That shift is largely because Biden can’t get West Virginia’s Joe Manchin to sign on to BBB or at least to sign on before year end but also because of the Republican Party’s continued onslaught on democratic principles and, let’s be real here, whether one supports Biden and his policies or not, voter suppression and coups should be beyond the pale.  Unfortunately, getting voters rights legislation passed is another one of those things that isn’t easy when you barely have a majority and the other side is opposed to making voting easier for anyone who might vote blue.  To get voter legislation passed Biden and Senate leader Schumer will have to get all their Senators to agree to suspend the filibuster, the way they just did for the debt ceiling, and so far at least one of them, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema who claims that she’s all in on voters rights, doesn’t seem all that interested in upsetting the filibuster status quo.  Stay tuned, the year is almost over, we will know soon enough whether Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock’s recent impassioned speech about the importance of stopping voter suppression has had any impact on the eccentric Sinema.

Viral Musings:  Well that didn’t take long.  Omicron is spreading like wild fire and New York City appears to be its US base of operations.  Covid positivity levels in the city have doubled to just under 8% in the past three days.  While some of that rise is due to Delta, holiday festivities, and the seasonal move back to indoor activities a lot of it is believed to be due to the highly contagious Omicron variant. The rest of the country should be very concerned because NYC is one of the most vaccinated locales in the country so what’s happening here will be worse where vax rates are lower.  The experts continue to believe that boosters combined with mitigation behavior are the way out of this mess but given the war on both shots and masks in lots of places we’re probably in for a tough few months.  As to boosters, yesterday the CDC recommended that people, even those who previously got J & J shots,  get boosted with either Moderna or Pfizer.  Their decision was based on those rare and sometimes fatal blood clots associated with the J & J jabs combined with the fact that as low as the J & J risk is, with Moderna and Pfizer shots more effective, the risk is not worth taking.  Also, the results are in and the Moderna vaccine, like the Pfizer one needs a boost to be effective against Omicron.  One more thing, contrary to the rantings of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson who is now pushing Listerine as a COVID cure, the mouthwash doesn’t do anything for COVID but as promised it does help with bad breath, plaque and gingivitis.